Video & Transcripts of Massage Chair Industry Update 12/04/12

Alan: Hi, this is Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ and today we are doing our massage chair industry update for the week of 12-04-2012. And we have some fun stuff to talk about today. First of all, I just want to, again, go over stock and we’re getting close to Christmas.

[SCREEN TEXT: Post Black Friday/Cyber Monday Stock Status]

Alan: We just finished the Black Friday/Cyber Monday week, and this is a good time to get a stock update because a lot of chairs are sold during that weekend and the week thereafter. So, here’s the stock update as far as we have it. The ‘Brown,’Black,’ and ‘Ivory’ Osaki OS-7075R, which has become an extremely popular chair by Osaki are all back ordered. I’m going to talk to you a little bit more about that back order in just a moment. The Inada chairs are all in stock, there is some inventory pressure on the ‘Red’ and the ‘Black’ leather Inada Sognos, but other than that, all the other chairs are in good stock. Human Touch chairs are in stock, except for the HT-9500 ‘Espresso,’ which is back ordered until early December, and this is early December so they may be here this week. And the ZeroG 4.0, which is their most popular-selling Immersion chair is back ordered for the ‘Black’ and the ‘Espresso’ until the late part of December, so you will not be able to get those for Christmas. The ‘Bone’ color is in stock on the 4.0, but not the ‘Black and the ‘Espresso.’ The Infinite Therapeutics chairs are in good stock, Panasonic is in stock, Omega is in stock, pretty much everything else is in stock. Now, this leads me to the other issue I wanted to talk about with regard to stock, as it relates to the Osaki chairs.

Alan: There is a port strike, in the Los Angeles Port, and that is where the vast majority of chairs come to from overseas, and that includes Inada, that includes Panasonic, that includes Omega, Osaki, Infinite Therapeutics, pretty much everybody, and it’s important to understand that with that port strike, chairs are not coming in. So fortunately, Inada and Infinite Therapeutics have good stock, so we’re not worried about that while they settle the strike, but for Osaki, that’s a problem. The 7075R is a very popular chair, and the ‘Black’ and the ‘Ivory’ were back ordered until – were supposed to be only back ordered until this week – well, that’s been pushed back based on whenever the strike gets worked out. And then once the strike is worked out, we don’t know how long it’s going to take to get that long chain of ships to come in to the harbor to be unloaded, and its contents sent on its merry way throughout the United States. Because apparently, there are ships anchored out to sea, quite a ways out of the LA Harbor, and those all have to be processed once the strike ends, and let’s hope the strike ends now. I tell you, they couldn’t have picked a better time to strike for them, couldn’t be a worse time for us, and for those of us who are purchasing products for Christmas, because all of the internationally-made products are coming in through the LA Harbor, and nothing is going to be getting out to the retailer. So, if you’re waiting for an Osaki 7075, you might be waiting a while. The ‘Taupe’ of the 7075 is in stock, but the other colors are out of stock, and will be until the port strike is resolved, so that’s an important thing to know.

[SCREEN TEXT: New IT-8100 From Infinite Therapeutics Now Available!]

Alan: Infinite Therapeutics has introduced their new IT-8100. I still don’t have all the details on it, but I do know that it’s in the same, kind of, genre of the IT-8200 and the 8500. There are foot rollers, there’s arm airbags, it’s more of a trimmed-down chair from the 8200 and the 8500. The price point is, I believe, $2895 with a $200 instant savings, brings it down to $2695, so for that mid-2000 price point, it’s a decent chair, and it’s a nice-looking chair, too. It doesn’t have the exact body styling as the 8500 or the 8200, which are very, very similar, but it does have a nice body styling, and I think you will like it. I just don’t know anything about the chair, I never sat in it, I haven’t seen one, even the information that we have on it is fairly limited. We had a client order one, and when we went to order it through Infinite Therapeutics, they hadn’t even come in yet. So, I don’t know if they are in, I don’t know if this stock, if this port strike is going to affect the arrival of the 8100s, but it is a Chinese-made chair and they are supposed to be in, so that’s about all I know right now. You can look on our website, with the information we have from Infinite Therapeutics, it is limited to some degree, but there is more information coming, and I’ll get it posted once we learn more about it.

[SCREEN TEXT: My Visit To Southern California]

Alan: Last week, I had a wonderful experience, I flew out to California – we’re in Utah here, this is where our office is, and our showroom is – I flew out to California to visit Human Touch, and I also visited, and I went to the main Human Touch office, or complex, in Long Beach, California on Walnut Avenue, and I had a wonderful visit there.

[SCREEN TEXT: Tour of Human Touch Facility]

Alan: And I was introduced to David Potter, who’s their VP of Design, and this is the fellow that basically introduced the whole concept of zero gravity to furnishings, to chairs in the home or chairs in the office, and he brought his expertise from another area, where the zero-gravity concept was utilized, and another field, another niche, and he brought it to the massage chair industry. And it began with the Perfect Chair, which was not a massage chair, but it was one of their flagship chairs at Human Touch, and then it was eventually integrated in to massage chairs, with the HT-7450. So, I had a wonderful visit with him, and we discussed the new Immersion chairs, which they came out with earlier this year, and apparently, are now starting to take off. The ZeroG 4.0 is an extremely popular chair, as is evidenced by their back order status on the ‘Black’ and the ‘Espresso.’ But I had a wonderful visit with him, and learning the whole idea of what they are trying to do with the Immersion chairs, and change the way of thinking in the massage chair industry, and changing the verbiage, the titles, the whole way of thinking about them, and it’s pretty cool. I really enjoyed being there at Human Touch, and sitting on all the chairs that they have designed, and having that great experience. My tour guide was Michael Hamm, who’s the Director of Commercial Accounts and Commercial Channels, he was absolutely delightful and treated me like royalty. I felt that, I was a little embarrassed by how kind they were to me, and how they made me feel. They made me feel so special for being there and I really appreciate that. And then I also met Hans Delhi, who is the Senior Vice President of Research & Development and Engineering for the chairs, and he’s the guy – where David is the guy that comes up with the design – Hans is the guy that takes the design, and blends it with the inner workings of the chair, like the rollers, and the mechanics, and the air bladder or the ottoman bladders, and whatnot. It was just really cool to meet with him too, and they have a little, a training lab up there that’s part of their Research & Development thing, where they have taken all their primary chairs and stripped them down to their upholstery, so you can see the actual inner workings of the chair while it’s on, and I found that fascinating. I’d always wondered about what Human Touch meant by paddles in the foot and calf massage. Their HT-9500, and before that their HT-1650, which are kind of from the same family of chairs, had this foot and calf ottoman that retracted underneath the chair, and then came out, and you could put your feet in it, and it had the most awesome massage. And people loved that massage, and I loved it – the first time I sat on the HT-1650, you know, five years ago – and I fell in love with that foot massager.

[SCREEN TEXT: Ottoman “Paddles” of HT Chairs]

Alan: Well, I finally saw what paddles are, and they have no airbags, it’s just these rubber, kind of a firm, rubber, molded contraption that kind of goes in and out and milks your legs, rather than using airbags, and I was expecting airbags or some modification of an airbag technology, and it has nothing to do with airbags. As a matter of fact, airbags are used very minimally on all the Human Touch chairs, except maybe the new PC-086 Serenity chair, which has a little air bladder, wave-like motion, but it’s not a true massage chair. But on the true massage chairs, there is really very little airbag massage, except for airbags that poke up to the butt, from the seat, on the 9500 and the 7450. Anyway, I had a wonderful visit with him, and went through the lab and saw how they do all their work in home. The only thing that they do is they outsource the manufacturing to China, and Thailand for their Perfect Chair, but for the massage chairs, to China. But everything else, the design, the engineering, the testing, everything is done in house there in Long Beach. And I was really quite impressed with it, I had a wonderful visit with him, I saw how the inner workings of the chair works, how the inner workings of the company’s logistics work, I saw the warehouse. It was enormous, it was just, as far as you could see in this massive warehouse, were boxes of chairs, stacked yea high and yea deep. It was fantastic, I thoroughly enjoyed it, I was there for probably about seven hours, or no, no sorry, not seven hours, but about six hours, I had just a fantastic time, and I’m very thankful to the people at Human Touch for taking such good care of me, and making me feel welcome, and showing me the inner workings of how they work. Now, having said all that, I’ve taken video footage of my visit, and I made a video. I just kind of completed editing – it’s not much of an edit job, it just has some labels and some titles and whatnot – but I put it together, and made a video. I’m going to post it on YouTube tomorrow, and then I’ll put up a blog post there, with a couple of other pictures, but you can then, you know, kind of, go with me as I go through Human Touch, and see the different places that I visited there, and get a feeling for what’s going on. It was fantastic, so I’d like to thank Human Touch for their goodness.

[SCREEN TEXT: Inada’s Warehouse]

Alan: The next morning, I went to visit Inada’s warehouse. Inada USA is based out of Colorado, but their warehousing is done in Southern California in Ontario, and I went there to videotape how the warehouse manages their stock, and it was pretty cool too, to be there and see as far as this, like wall-to-wall Inada Sognos and YuMes and 1As. It was very, very impressive and I really enjoyed that experience, so I videotaped that. I haven’t made – I haven’t prepared that for YouTube yet – but I’ll do that in the next few days, and have a blog post discussing that experience as part of my California trip. But the people were wonderful to me, and I had a great time. Unfortunately, I was not able to meet with Omega, I guess the president of Omega was in China the week that I was there, and I did not have the time to run up to see my Panasonic distributor up in Canoga Park, which is a ways away, but I did get a chance to meet with Dominic, who’s my Southern California delivery guy. I was hooked up with him through Omega a number of years ago, and he’s been a very, very faithful contractor for me, he delivers all my Southern California chairs, and does a wonderful job and he’s always very reliable, and just fantastic to deal with. And I finally got a chance to sit down and visit with him, and have breakfast, and get to meet him. We went to Denny’s, and I had the ‘Lumberjack Special,’ and it was an amazing amount of food, and I could barely stand straight when I left to go to Human Touch after that breakfast. But anyway, that was my experience in Southern California, doing the massage chair business, and go on my blog and on YouTube, and you’ll see the videos as I post them over the next day or two.

[SCREEN TEXT: Christmas Shipping Deadline Fast Approaching!]

Alan: I think that’s about it for massage chairs, we’re getting really close to the Christmas deadline. I would strongly recommend that December 17th be your – don’t order much later than December 17th – now, if you’re ordering an Inada chair, and you live in Southern California, we can probably get that chair to you in two or three days, so it’s not a big deal. But if you live in New York, and you’re ordering a chair from Infinite Therapeutics that ships out of Seattle, or an Osaki that ships out of Texas, or an Inada, or Human Touch or Omega or a Panasonic chair out of Southern California, you may not get it in time for Christmas. And the 24th is the last delivery day, and I don’t know what the local shipping companies do as far as delivery goes on that day, but if you want to be safe, and make sure you get your bloody chair by the time Christmas arrives, order soon, order now. And there’s still good stock, except for these Osakis, which are back ordered, and lined up out in the ocean there, in the Pacific Ocean.

[SCREEN TEXT: 888-259-5380; 801-651-2026]

Alan: But please feel free to call me if you have any questions, you can always reach me at my toll-free number, 888-259-5380. You can also call me directly on my cell phone, and I answer it pretty much 24-7, at 801-651-2026. And if you have any questions about the chairs, about delivery times, about, not sure what model to get, call me, I’m more than happy to shoot the bull with you, and talk about them.

[SCREEN TEXT: IT-8500 vs. OS-7075R Article]

Alan: I just posted an article yesterday, part one, and today, part two, comparing the Osaki OS-7075R and the Infinite Therapeutics IT-8500, which are two very, very popular chairs. After the Inada Sogno, which is our top-selling chair by far, the next two models that are the most popular are those two, and I get asked all the time, which of those two chairs would I recommend. Well, I wrote about a 1400-word review, two parts, broke it up in to two parts for you, one part talks about the similarities, the next part talks about differences, and then also some of my own personal observations by having both of them in my showroom, and that should be able to give you a pretty good idea about those chairs and which one might feel like it fits better for you, but feel free to call me. If you’d like to receive further updates on these massage chair relief industry update videos, go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel here. If you like what I’m sharing with you here or in any of our tutorials, please ‘Like’ us on Facebook, our Facebook page, or ‘Share’ us on Twitter and Facebook, and please ‘Like’ our video on YouTube, and we would really appreciate if you did that, too. Thank you very, very much, again, for your time today, and we will talk to you in a couple weeks, just before Christmas. But have a wonderful day, and we’ll talk to you then. Thanks for visiting today, we’ll see you. Bye bye.

President of Massage Chair Relief, Dr. Weidner is a leading expert in the massage chair industry. His articles, videos, interviews, website, and industry updates have become the resources of choice for those researching which massage chair is best for them.